Good Morning, World

I guess I just lack imagination because if you'd have told me that all it would take for Quebecois twink extraordinaire Théodore Pellerin to plunk himself comfortably down inside director Bruce La Bruce's eroticized punk pornographic aesthetic was a shaving of his head I'd have demanded evidence... and here's said evidence! Théodore shaved his head either for this Behind the Blinds photoshoot or for a role that happened to coincide with the shoot -- either way you can see in a couple of shots the hair getting shorter as it goes along...

... so it was happening while the shoot was happening. So hey Bruce la Bruce if you're listening and/or looking -- get in touch with Théodore's people ASAP.  I have been too busy with Tribeca to watch Solo, Pellerin's toxic drag queen romance with Felix Maritaud (and talk about another actor who should be working with Bruce La Bruce), but this shoot makes one feel as if Théodore. is looking to roughen up his image and I can imagine to no rougher. Hit the jump for what we've got of this shoot so far...

Hi Ho Solo

Finally some news on Solo, the "drag queen romance" starring MNPP faves Théodore Pellerin and Felix Maritaud that I have been posting on for two entire years now -- in February of 2022 I stumbled on some pictures from the movie's set (it was called Drag back then) and I have been (im)patiently awaiting the final product ever since. Even as it screened at fests (it won Best Canadian Feature at TIFF) for other less attentive people, I have waited. And finally my time has come! Solo is hitting NYC on May 24th and L.A. the week after (and then presumably inward toward the middle parts of the country from there), and we've got a trailer! Watch:

Good Morning, Gratuitous Félix Maritaud

Apropos of nothing in particular here (except that we've grown impatient waiting for his gay movie with Théodore Pellerin) is some actor Félix Maritaud this morning. I'd fallen behind checking his Instagram and it turned out to be, of course, a feast. Those, along with all of the photo-shoots he's done since the last time we checked in -- he's an extremely photographed man, for reasons that are obvious -- and I gathered up a nice lil' batch here today to make up for the fact that I've got a screening this morning and won't be back til this afternoon. So if you hit the jump I'll share a few more choice photos for this Tuesday stretch...

Pics of the Day

I am shocked to discover that the movie I am about to talk about I have only brought up on Twitter, apparently -- if ever there was a movie that deserved my yammering to makes its way back here to the site for a proper post then this was the movie! The photo above is of the French actor Félix Mairtaud -- best known for the 2018 film Sauvage / Wild (reviewed here) but he was also in BPM and Knife+Heart and Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna, and these are all movies you ought to see if you have not yet seen them) -- and the Quebecois actor Théodore Pellerin, best known for the Kristen Dunst series On Becoming a God in Central Florida, or his small roles in Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Boy Erased, or maybe from my ongoing Twitter thread about how he is probably dating also-Quebeqois actor François Arnaud.

Here's a photo of Théodore Pellerin & Félix Maritaud sharing a bath on the set of their upcoming movie DRAG via director Sophie Dupuis' Insta https://t.co/COt1s2yVqK (thx to reader Marc-Antoine for heads-up) - film described to me as "a toxic love story between two drag queens" pic.twitter.com/C3J7Rz798f

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) February 18, 2022

Separate from the Theo-Fran thread though I tweeted the above back in February and that really should have made its way here to MNPP proper as a news-item, but did not -- Pellerin and Maritaud are co-starring in a movie called Drag from director Sophie Dupui, about two drag queens who fall in love. This movie doesn't even seem to have an IMDb page yet so I don't have much info to share, but the director has been sharing content from the shoot on her Instagram ...

... (as have the actors) and it appears that they have just finished shooting. (The photo at the very top of this post, which appears to be an official still, was shared by Felix on his Insta yesterday.) I should also add here that reader Marc-Antoine was kind enough to send me all this info back in February when I tweeted that first tweet, and I thank him for it! Obviously I will keep my eyes and ears and whatnot to the ground for more information when it's available -- stay your self tuned!

Freak Orlando

First things first -- and "first things" at MNPP are always the shirtless guy -- if the dude on the right in that photo above looks familiar to you then the chances are good that you have probably seen the truly bizarre 2018 soccer by way of cotton candy queer-scape flick Diamantino, as that is that film's extremely handsome star Carloto Cotta. Pictured above he's seen as part of the surprisingly broad cast of notable actors that show up in the Sundance premiered folk horror flick You Won't Be Alone, which I just reviewed today for Pajiba, read that here. 

It also stars in small roles Noomi Rapace, Alice Englert, Felix Maritaud -- these lightly familiar faces kept popping up amid all of these more obscure Estonian ones and surprising me. The film already has a trailer (watch it here) because it's being released on April 1st, and I recommend this one! If you watched and enjoyed that terrific doc about Folk Horror recently (which is on Shudder now, by the way) this will be right in that wheelhouse -- it's slow and odd and super queer; there's one scene (glimpsed in the trailer and screen-shotted below) where a bunch of the local young 19th century farmers strip naked and go jerk off in a field together that worth the price of admission alone! (These are the things I couldn't write about in my respectable review, but here at MNPP I'll go wild.)

Which Witch is Witch

Well Focus Features sure isn't wasting any time on this horror movie they're premiering at Sundance next month -- it's already got a poster, a trailer, and a release date! You Won't Be Alone stars Noomi Rapace as a young woman in 19th century Macedonia who is turned into a witch by an ancient spirit, who then in turn kills and takes over the body of a peasant girl so she can life some life human-like again. Besides Rapace the movie also stars Alice Englert (Beautiful Creatures hive holla!) and sexy-boy Félix Maritaud of BPM / Sauvage / Knife+Heart fame. Here's the trailer:

You Won't Be Alone hits theaters on April 1st.

Felix Maritaud Two Times

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Pantys '19: Performers, Part One -- Actors

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Every so often for my Golden Trousers awards I do something I call "Actor to Actor" where I write small scenes up of interaction between one of my favorite actors of the year and one of my favorite actresses of the year. Well I am not doing that this year. This year I'm just going to post my 10 favorites, with 10 runners-up. Keeping it simple! And so here, in no particular order and beginning with the men...

My 10 Favorite Actors of 2019

Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse

Jonathan Majors, The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Tom Mercier, Synonyms

Franz Rogowski, Transit

Géza Röhrig, To Dust

Matthias Schoenaerts, The Mustang

Jonas Dassler, The Golden Glove

Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory

Matthew Rhys, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Robert Pattinson, The Lighthouse

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Ten Runners Up

Asier Etxeandia, Pain and Glory

Kelvin Harrison Jr, Luce

Taron Egerton, Rocketman

Song Kang-ho, Parasite

Jack Reynor, Midsommar

Robert De Niro, The Irishman

Shia LaBeouf, Honey Boy

Jimmie Fails, The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Felix Maritaud, Sauvage/Wild

Aldis Hodge, Clemency

What were your fave male performances of 2019?
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sauvage / Wild (2018)

Doctor: Shall we try something to get you
off the drugs for a while?
Léo: But... Why?
Doctor: What do you mean, why?
Léo: To do what?
Doctor: Hold on a second.
It's not either crack or nothing.
Léo: It is.
Doctor: You don't want to change?
Léo: Why would I?

A happy 27 to the French actor Félix Maritaud today! After starring in the three-punch of this movie and the gay giallo Knife + Heart and the AIDS drama B.P.M. all within just a  twelve month period he certainly caught our attention.

You can see why. And you can see a lot more of why here. (Most especially here.) Up next for Félix is a role in Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna, which is incredibly, amazingly, described thus:

"Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches - but that's not all. Lux Æterna is also an essay on cinema, the love of film, and on-set hysterics."

Tell me that doesn't whet yer whistle. The movie -- which appears to only be fifty minutes long, so perhaps "movie" doesn't exactly apply to whatever this is -- also co-stars Karl Glusman from Gaspar's 3D pornstravaganza Love and Felix and Karl actually posed together looking all hot n' fancy in tuxes when it screened at Cannes earlier this year...

Oh I would watch something starring the two of them, I would. Get on making that movie, Gaspar. Meanwhile the rest of us can hit the jump if we want to stare at a couple more photos of Félix...

Good Morning, World

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I keep forgetting to mention that I won't be blogging tomorrow, I've got the day off and plan on making use of it, so this gif of Sauvage star Félix Maritaud (see lots more of him here), exuding easy laze-about-ness, feels about correct as an expression of my immediate future self (even if I ought to save that gif for our not-far-off annual "Quit Smoking" post). Thanks, Félix! Have y'all been able to see Sauvage yet? As I said in my review it's certainly worth seeing. In related Félix was photographed for the latest issue of L'Officiel Hommes and I've got those shots right here after the jump...

Grease My Hairmouth with Sweet Vaselines

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Léo just can't say no. Like a sore that won't heal he's open to all the world -- even when a john waves a ten-gallon butt-plug in his face he can't bring himself to flinch. Legs up to all comers -- he's acquiescence in animal form. And if he gloms onto you, with those wicked doe's eyes, watch out -- he's as relentless and single-minded as a staph infection. He'll pound on your door at every hour of the night until you pound him right back, one way or another.

As played by Félix Maritaud and directed by Camille Vidal-Naquet Léo seems for all intents and all purposes a bit of a fairy tale creature, here in this sexy cool movie dually titled Sauvage / Wild -- his maneuverings through his itty bitty scuzzy corner of the world don't really make logical sense if you come at them as human behavior. It's best to think of the film as a multiplication of something like the ethos of Alain Guiraudie's film Stranger by the Lake, where Pierre Deladonchamps just couldn't stop getting drawn towards his own sexy mustachioed doom. 

Léo is nothing but such bad impulses piled onto even worse -- self-destructive to the point of self-immolative, he ignores his own health, mentally and physically, at every given opportunity -- all in the name of the impossible. He'll hug the pavement if it will hug him back. All in the name of love, impossible love with only the worst candidates, and he'll accept no less. It's all or nothing, and the weed-struck airport-adjacent intersections of Gay Paree are serving up heaping helpings of nothing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Léo is the romantic fool in one sense, but turned up to eleven, eleven squared and sodomized for good measure -- romance as back-scratched obscenity in an obscene dirt world. Love is no dream -- it's bruises and barf and blood running down your inner calves; the great poets of the flesh have all been hunted down by serial killers, easy peasy prey, the simple-minded creatures who just couldn't say no. It's just that the knives bring all the mean, pretty boys so, so close.

Sauvage / Wild is now playing at Film Forum here in NYC.

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Getcha Gay Stuff Here

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One of this year's best films which probably didn't make it to your local theater, given the state of this sad world, is Yann Gonzalez's gay giallo Knife + Heart -- you can read my review from the Brooklyn Horror Fest right here. It's been playing here in NYC for several weeks now but according to Box Office Mojo it never got into more than six theaters in the country so I don't blame you if you missed it! But your time to shine is not that far off! The blu-ray is now available for pre-order, it hits the streets on June 4th. If you've ever believed a word I have ever said about anything then hear me now -- you should see this movie. It's strange and sexy and it  has a lushly transfixing score from M83 and it co-stars recent gratuity recipient Felix Maritaud (not to mention the well-mustached porn actor Pierre Emo, seen above with Felix)... what more could you even want?

View this post on Instagram

#latenight #schwuz #creaturesofthenight #graffiti #uystudio

A post shared by PIERRE EMÖ (@pierreemo) on Apr 7, 2019 at 11:20am PDT

Good Morning, Gratuitous Félix Maritaud

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Sauvage Love

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I could've sworn that I had posted something about Camille Vidal-Naquet's forthcoming film Sauvage, starring Félix Maritaud as a gay hustler in France, when it got some heads turned due to its explicit sexual nature during Cannes last May -- there were several headlines, the sort which most certainly turned my head, like "Sauvage, the film with a sex scene so graphic people walked out" and the like. But a quick scan turned up nothing? Anyway I was reminded this afternoon of the film when the line-up for this year's "New Directors / New Films" festival was announced and hip hip horny hooray, Sauvage was among the titles announced.

You can see the entire line-up right here -- ND/NF runs from March 26th through April 7th, and per usual there are a ton of interesting looking titles. I always see something groovy thanks to them -- I saw the terrific Iranian horror film Under the Shadow there, I saw the Austrian nightmare Goodnight Mommy there, and I saw Marielle Heller's glorious The Diary of a Teenage Girl thanks to them too. Oh and The Babadook! I saw that there too! The fuckin' Babadook, man.

Sauvage is actually getting a US release not long after this festival thanks to the ever fabulous Strand Releasing (how many gay boys have found themselves growing up bit by bit as their smoke-filled logo filled the screen?) -- it hits the US on April 10th. Right now all I could find is the French trailer, but let's watch!

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